Wordwall assisted tests as homework assignments

192 WORDWALL ASSISTED TESTS AS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS 1 PETRANKA T. IVANOVA Abstract: Teaching chunks is inextricably linked with testing students on chunks which could be accomplished in a range of ways. A test prepared and conducted with the help of Wordwall proved to be one of the productive functional strategies. Given as a homework assignment it presupposes some constraints but it successfully corroborates the assumption of being a useful and desired activity. The paper offers a view from social psychology perspective considering the ideas of Self-determination theory in terms of motivation and behavior where regarding students’ autonomy, tests are presented as ones involving volition for pleasure and fun and meanwhile working in the direction of implicit acquisition. Keywords: homework, test, Wordwall. Introduction A research by Lindstromberg and Boers [5] conveys the idea that “about half of everyday English discourse is made up of strings of frequently co-occurring words”. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to take heed of chunks in the process of teaching English. On the other hand, teaching is commonly related to testing how far knowledge is acquired. A test prepared with the help of Wordwall is an effective solution for accomplishing such a goal. Given as а homework assignment, it involves pleasure and fun for the learners but also the method leads to their strong desire to achieve better and better results and get more and more scores. Students are excited and sometimes do the tests more than once which helps to learn and learn it in a natural way. Moreover, playing which involves eagerness and enthusiasm concerning willingness for doing 1 This work is developed as a part of Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen project, Gamification in Educational Process, № 08122/06.02.2025. 193 tests again and again until better results are achieved “leads to deep learning”, as Kelly [4] puts it. It is argued that “if the chunks that a learner knows are well embedded in long-term memory, these chunks may serve the learner as ‘islands of accuracy’ that reduce the overall risk of making mistakes or of producing odd word combinations.” [5]. As non-native speakers are prone to construct phrases under their mother tongue influence, they sometimes use structures which are grammatically correct but odd enough to English speaking communities. Testing students on chunks is intended to serve as an approach of drawing attention to the way words are combined with the ultimate goal of remembering it. In fact, as Ryan [6] puts it, people “have an innate drive to seek patterns” and when we recognize them, we remember them for future reference and prediction. He states that this kind of instinct propels our memory to retention emphasizing the significant role of the patterns’ frequent occurrence and their association with strong emotion. There is “statistical evidence that alliteration plays a part in formation of compounds” [5] It is claimed that both vowel repetition as well as consonant repetition can facilitate memorization. As compounds are considered a type of chunk, it could be assumed that assonance and consonance might be as much important for another type of chunk, i.e. strong collocations, phrasal verbs, and idioms that are in the spotlight here. Why to test students online Regardless of their age people are always willing to play games. Kelly [4] reminds about play and its central role it should have in pedagogy, especially for young learners. Online games are also appropriate not only for children. They are applicable to teaching adults in higher education courses as well. While naming some well-known useful digital tools, Leah Golberg [3] advises to embrace technology to make testing fun and automate feedback. Wordwall games are another suitable option for the purpose. A variety of templates are offered, but also there is more than one way to use a single template as it can be used for practicing different lexical or grammatical structures. 194 In addition, these tests can be set to allow doing them more than once for repetition is a well-known tool in learning a foreign language. Involving strong emotions together with reiteration cooperates in building up long-lasting knowledge. According to Self-determination theory (SDT) “human organism is evolved to be inherently active, intrinsically motivated, and oriented toward developing naturally through integrative processes” [1]. These inherent qualities are argued to develop over the course of time and have an important role in learning. Also they assist for the overall health and well-being of human individuals. They satisfy the need for relatedness as online players often require feedback information to know whether their results are received by the educator and sometimes even wait for approval in addition to the successful score they have seen at the end of the test. Another reason to employ online tests is that they can be useful in building up automaticity. As in the course of the game test words appear and students are motivated to click the answer as quickly as possible, such a training provides the ability for brain to retrieve the collocations fast enough which would further on affect learners’ abilities to react rapidly while using the foreign language in real communication. The platform, as all other online tests do, provides students with an immediate feedback. From psychological point of view this eliminates the undesired stress while waiting to find out whether their answers are right or wrong. Another thing to mention is that students are able to learn from their mistakes right away. Donaghy et al. [2] point out that communication in nowadays’ society “is increasingly multimodal (consisting of any combination of audio, images, video, and text)” which urges education to go beyond teaching only the four well-known language skills adding “skills of viewing” integration which addresses different processes such as comprehension and responding to multimodal texts as well as communicating the information and ideas that one finds in them. In a sense, working with Wordwall test helps developing such multimodal literacy. 195 Method Underlining the necessity of learning chunks Lindstromberg and Boers [5] suggest several ways of classifying them. The present paper focuses on strong collocations (e.g. tell a story), some phrasal verbs and idioms. The tests are designed for checking both lexical and grammar knowledge as the students should be aware of the meaning of the words as well as the way they are combined. They are selected carefully to fit the alliteration sound pattern, e.g. laugh for long, assonance, e.g. make a cake. SDT explains intrinsic motivation as an inbuilt characteristic of humans and related to psychological freedom or selfdetermination [1]. Within this theory, Deci and Ryan introduced several mini-theories, one of which is cognitive evaluation theory (CET) which says that choice supports autonomy need and works for intrinsic motivation. Setting an assignment without asking the students to do the task by all means, giving them the autonomy to decide by themselves if they need it and want to do it, and advise them rather than oblige them can be considered a useful manoeuvre with the effect of internalization even if the students have initially viewed the task as not much interesting. Such a view is derived from Deci and Ryan’s inference that “forced competence development does not enhance intrinsic motivation” [1] and better learning results are achieved if students have the autonomy. Following the idea about “testing not for assessment but as a tool of learning” [3], the college students were explained that doing the tests is an extra task that would be useful for gaining foreign language knowledge without having a direct impact on their final marks. Another thing in the CET mini-theory is the role of the positive and negative feedback. As Wordwall tests provide immediate feedback, they should be carefully composed since negative feedback would have detrimental effect on students’ intrinsic motivation. According to the famous postulate, tests should neither be too difficult, (to give the students a chance to get good results), nor too easy (lest the participants in the test get bored). Positive feedback would enhance intrinsic motivation 196 and give enough confidence to make learners try again for higher score. In order to avoid pressure, no other overt deadlines were set except for the hint about it being useful for the preparation for their further regular tests. The three tests, this paper focuses on, were created on the basis of the lexis used in the college students’ textbook by virtue of the online platform mentioned above. All the three types include multiple choice questions where different number of correct answers are suggested. The rationale for taking such steps involves deeper reasoning behind conclusions concerning any of the suggested options in the developed materials. Participants The tests were prepared for the first and second year college students. Both groups were mixed level where some had just begun learning English, others were false beginners and still others were advanced. There was an age variety within the groups, too. These were not crucial factors against a backdrop of self-determination theory where qualities are considered as a process across lifespan, despite the fact that changes in motivation related to age are recognized [1]. Two first-year seminar groups were given the same tasks, and one second-year group was assigned another task. Such unification of the two groups in the test recorded summary existing as one group is not embarrassing since the overall results are more important than which group exactly did what. Three types of tests tried as homework assignments The three tests were of different types. The templates used were not the same and the purpose of each test was slightly modified, but all the quizzes tried to examine the learners’ degree particular collocations from the Students’ books were acquired. • Test 1 (see fig. 1) Two decks of cards shuffled and when the cards on top of each pile turned, the students had to decide whether the two words belonged together or not. The learners were expected to choose either the tick or the cross bellow the cards before the next shuffle. 197 Idioms considered as a type of chunk [5] are more difficult to remember as compared to short words. Therefore, the pairs were carefully chosen to represent either assonance or consonance which was intended to boost the process of acquisition. Fig. 1. An example from Test 1 • Test 2 (see fig. 2) The second one was a multiple choice test with a single right answer. This test required to choose the correct option and drag it to form a meaningful collocation. Students were expected to recognize different parts of speech and choose those words that were possibly coordinated. Fig. 2. An example from Test 2 • Test 3 (see fig. 3) It was also designed as a multiple choice test but here different number of possible answers were suggested and context was provided additionally. Unfortunately, when the students chose an answer, if they gave a correct one, the rest of the acceptable answers appeared immediately and the students did not have the chance to decide whether there was another correct variant and which exactly it was if any. Although this could be considered a disadvantage in a certain way, it could also be accepted as an advantage in terms of facilitating the process of foreign language learning as students could learn implicitly from what they saw displayed. 198 Fig. 3. An example from Test 3 Results After preparing and distributing the tests among the students the results were automatically summarized in a variety of ways: a) general – concerning the number of students who had had access to the test in correlation to the number of students who completed the test (see fig. 4); Fig. 4 General results b) more specific – concerning the learning (average score, top score, the fastest student, correct or incorrect by question, score distribution, results by student). (see fig. 5). Fig. 5. Some more detailed findings 199 Although Test 1 and Test 2 were distributed to two identical groups consisting of 61 students altogether, the first test was done by 29 (47,5%) of them and the second one was completed by 33 (54,1%). Test 3 was distributed to 20 students and 13 of them (or 65%) proved interested in doing it. These were the results registered shortly after the test assignment but the number was increasing to a certain point in time. Moreover, they still remain open and students can practise whenever they like. The gathered information gives evidence that such extra exercises were more or less desired tasks. But more empirical data should be collected to reach reliable confirmation of such supposition concerning the role of internal and external motivation. Conclusion As far as teaching does not concern evaluation predominantly, similar tests as the suggested above fit the purpose of helping students learn as much effectively as possible while offering an accurate portrayal of their evolvement. Several benefits of using Wordwall tests for homework assignments could be pointed out: 1. For the students In terms of pleasure and contentment: - provide fun and entertainment (makes doing extra tasks a desired activity); - perhaps the least time-consuming task as compared to written ones; - give internal motivation to get better scores/ do it over and over again until the need for competence is satisfied; - there is no deadline, the time for doing the test is not fixed to a particular day or hour, students can do it whenever they decide or find it convenient and their need for autonomy is met; In terms of learning: - provide visual support; - the different number of correct answers allow deeper reasoning; - provide opportunity for repeated doing as many times as learners want; 200 - give instant feedback; - are highly uncomplicated; - allow learning implicitly; - assists in gaining multimodal literacy. After choosing their answer, students get an immediate feedback and know which one is (also) correct. They can memorize chunks and then use them automatically but also “noticing and examining chunks on word-by-word basis can be extremely fruitful stages in the learning process.” [5]. Seeing them, especially repeatedly, is enough to remember them. No other efforts are necessary, e.g. learners don’t have to look up in a dictionary, etc. 2. For the teacher - Timesaving and work-saving, i.e. save much time to have the tests prepared and checked afterwards; - Receives collected data and gets systematized results without any exertion; - Gets clear view about what is difficult and what is easy for the students (graphics and tables with the numbers of correct and incorrect answers). Drawbacks: - A problem of Test 1 is that in fact some of the answers which are not intended to be ticked as correct are also probable, e.g. it is possible to draw, break or watch the windscreen wiper but having in mind that the students are familiar with certain texts where the words are combined in a particular way, the learners are expected to discern exactly the same expressions as those occurring in the textbook stories. - A drawback of Test 3 is that with a click on one of the correct answers starts the appearance of the rest correct answers without student’s intervention. Further work As the students are of different foreign language level, another part (or even parts) could be added for those who have completed the basic tests successfully for less than the specific length of time.